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Week ahead should see temperatures in the 50s and 60s

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<p>In the interest of honesty, I admit I&#8217;m not a huge Alice Hoffman fan. I read &#8220;Practical Magic&#8221; after watching the movie and found it boring. However, the premise interested me. It&#8217;s a slice of New York City history I didn&#8217;t know much about.</p><p>&#8220;The Museum of Extraordinary Things&#8221; takes place in 1911 in Coney Island. The museum belongs to Professor Sardi, who features &#8220;living wonders.&#8221; One of these wonders is his daughter, Coralie, who has webbed fingers. Being a gifted swimmer, she poses as a mermaid in the museum.</p><p>One summer, as interest in the museum and her exhibit wanes, her father forces her to swim at night in the waters around Manhattan. She is disguised as a mysterious monster in the hopes of spreading rumors about oddities that will draw people back to the exhibition. One evening, she is carried off course by the current, setting her in Ezekiel Cohen&#8217;s path.</p><p>Cohen is a former Orthodox Jew who abandoned his father, a tailor, to pursue his dreams of being a photographer. Now going by Eddie, Ezekiel, ends up at the scene of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and photographs girls as they were rescued or died trying to escape the flames. Later, families come to see him to help identify the dead through his photographs. He is approached by one father from his old neighborhood who is convinced that his daughter did not die in the fire. He asks for Eddie&#8217;s help in tracking her down.</p><p>Meanwhile, Coralie&#8217;s father forces her to perform lewd sexual acts in the mermaid tank in front of strange men. He also continues to make her swim in the Hudson River disguised as a monster. She is deeply unhappy. She tries to investigate her father&#8217;s mysterious past.</p><p>Eventually, Coralie and Eddie meet and fall in love. Between her father and Eddie&#8217;s obsession with the wealthy factory owners he worked for as a child, their relationship is hard. Can they forge through the obstacles facing them?</p><p>There are a lot of storylines going on in this novel, but they come together by the end. The culmination of the novel is drawn directly from history. On Coney Island, there was a famous amusement park called Dreamland which caught fire and burned to the ground. This disaster forms the backdrop for the final scenes, which were among the most exciting of the book.</p><p>Each chapter contains an italicized section filled in the two main character&#8217;s backgrounds and childhood before returning to the main plotline. Initially, this was interesting as it helps the reader understand what made Eddie and Coralie who they are. But as the story progressed, these sections dragged and ceased to add to the plot. Disappointingly, the mystery of the missing girl was solved far faster than I thought it would be.</p><p>Hoffman does an excellent job of using New York history as the setting of the book. She created well-rounded characters, but the momentum of the novel got lost in Hoffman&#8217;s literary flourishes and the slow pace of the book. Eddie and Coralie don&#8217;t meet until more than halfway through the novel and their romance feels rushed.</p><p>While it was a solid read, the novel isn&#8217;t gripping or exciting. I did take the time to read more about the Dreamland fire and was fascinated by how Hoffman integrated real details into her plot. I wish she had picked up the pace more and given us more time to fall in love with Coralie and Eddie as a couple.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">&#8220;The Museum of Extraordinary Things&#8221; is written by Alice Hoffman. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/web1_extraordinary.jpg</photo1><caption1>&#8220;The Museum of Extraordinary Things&#8221; is written by Alice Hoffman. </caption1><photoCredit1>Submitted photo </photoCredit1></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Dorothy Sasso</p><p>On the Books</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><factboxMeta><p>&#8220;The Museum of Extraordinary Things&#8221;</p><p>Author: Alice Hoffman</p><p>Page Number: 381</p><p>Publisher: Scribner</p><p>Rating:&#9830;&#9830;&#9830; 1/2</p></factboxMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Dorothy Sasso is a former Soap Opera Digest writer and a private school teacher. She is busy reading books and raising her daughter.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

On the Books: “The Museum of Extraordinary Things” is a slow read that needs more time for readers to fall in love with characters